As when the impatient greyhound, slipp’d from far, Bounds o’er the glebe, to course the fearful hare, She in her speed does all her safety lay; And he with double speed pursues the prey; O’erruns her at the sitting turn, and licks His chaps in vain, and blows upon the flix: She scapes, and for the neighb’ring covert strives, And, gaining shelter, doubts if yet she lives. If little things with great we may compare, Such was the god, and such the flying fair; She, urged by fear, her feet did swiftly move, But he more swiftly, who was urged by love. He gathers ground upon her in the chase; Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace; And just is fastening on the wish’d embrace. The nymph grew pale, and, in a mortal fright, Spent with the labour of so long a flight, And now despairing, cast a mournful look Upon the streams of her paternal brook: “O help,” she cried, “in this extremest need! If water-gods are deities indeed; Gape earth, and this unhappy wretch entomb; Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.” Scarce had she finish’d, when her feet she found

Benumb’d with cold, and fasten’d to the ground; A filmy rind about her body grows; Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs: The nymph is all into a laurel gone; The smoothness of her skin remains alone. Yet Phoebus loves her still, and casting round Her bole his arms, some little warmth he found. The tree still panted in the unfinish’d part, Not wholly vegetive, and heaved her heart. He fix’d his lips upon the trembling rind; It swerved aside, and his embrace declined: To whom the god, “Because thou canst not be My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree: Be thou the prize of honour and renown; The deathless poet, and the poem, crown: Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn, And, after poets, be by victors worn: Thou shalt returning Caesar’s triumph grace, When pomps shall in a long procession pass; Wreath’d on the post before his palace wait, And be the sacred guardian of the gate: Secure from thunder, and unharm’d by Jove; Unfading as the immortal powers above: And as the locks of Phoebus are unshorn,

So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn.” The grateful tree was pleased with what he said, And shook the shady honours of her head.

Io, the daughter of Inachus, becomes the favourite mistress of Jupiter, who transforms her into the shape of a beautiful heifer, in order that she may escape the jealousy of Juno⁠—The goddess, suspecting the fraud, obtains from her husband the animal, whose beauty she commends; and commits her to the custody of the hundred-eyed Argus⁠—Mercury, at the command of Jupiter, destroys Argus, whose eyes are placed by Juno on the tail of the peacock, a bird sacred to her divinity; while Io, exposed to the persecutions of the enraged goddess and wandering over the greatest part of the earth, at length arrives in Egypt, where she is restored to her former shape, and worshipped as a deity under the name of Iris.

But, Inachus, who, in his cave alone, Wept not another’s losses, but his own; For his dear Io, whether stray’d or dead To him uncertain, doubtful tears he shed. He sought her through the world, but sought in vain, And nowhere finding, rather fear’d her slain.